Good news first: I'm starting up an intensive animation program at a local university this September! (Hooray!) I'm super excited to see my skills improve, super busy with getting ready, and super pumped to start this new chapter in general! (Super!)

And now the bad news: (Not super!) I can't guarantee that homework and projects won't prevent me from keeping up with a regular update schedule. In fact I'm quite confident that I won't be able to update weekly at all. I'm already in desperate need of a comic hiatus in order to a) get ready for school and b) prepare for the next chapter of The Chronicles of Oro. (The setting of this next chapter is going to be challenging for me and I want to make sure I'm prepared well in advance for tricky perspective shots, etc.) I'm planning to work on the comic whenever I have the time and energy but I can't make any promises until I get settled into my new schedule.

Is my inevitable lack of consistent updates going to affect my membership with SpiderForest at all? Is this the right place to bring it up?

We understand that real life happens. Hiatuses are inevitable - after all you're not getting paid to make your webcomic (most of us aren't). So long as you make effort to update when you can or at least keep us informed of what's going on it won't affect your status at all.